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List Of Misnamed Theorems
This is a list of misnamed theorems in mathematics. It includes theorems (and lemmas, corollaries, conjectures, laws, and perhaps even the odd object) that are well known in mathematics, but which are not named for the originator. That is, these items on this list illustrate Stigler's law of eponymy (which is not, of course, due to Stephen Stigler, who credits Robert K Merton). *Benford's law. This was first stated in 1881 by Simon Newcomb, and rediscovered in 1938 by Frank Benford. The first rigorous formulation and proof seems to be due to Ted Hill in 1988.; see also the contribution by Persi Diaconis. *Bertrand's ballot theorem. This result concerning the probability that the winner of an election was ahead at each step of ballot counting was first published by W. A. Whitworth in 1878, but named after Joseph Louis François Bertrand who rediscovered it in 1887. A common proof uses ''André's reflection method'', though the proof by Désiré André did not use any reflect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered true starting points of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Allen Whitworth
William Allen Whitworth (1 February 1840 – 12 March 1905) was an English mathematician and a priest in the Church of England.. Education and mathematical career Whitworth was born in Runcorn; his father, William Whitworth, was a school headmaster, and he was the oldest of six siblings. He was schooled at the Sandicroft School in Northwich and then at St John's College, Cambridge, earning a B.A. in 1862 as 16th Wrangler. He taught mathematics at the Portarlington School and the Rossall School, and was a professor of mathematics at Queen's College in Liverpool from 1862 to 1864. He returned to Cambridge to earn a master's degree in 1865, and was a fellow there from 1867 to 1882. Mathematical contributions As an undergraduate, Whitworth became the founding editor in chief of the ''Messenger of Mathematics'', and he continued as its editor until 1880. He published works about the logarithmic spiral and about trilinear coordinates, but his most famous mathematical publication is the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Cayley
Arthur Cayley (; 16 August 1821 – 26 January 1895) was a prolific British mathematician who worked mostly on algebra. He helped found the modern British school of pure mathematics. As a child, Cayley enjoyed solving complex maths problems for amusement. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he excelled in Greek, French, German, and Italian, as well as mathematics. He worked as a lawyer for 14 years. He postulated the Cayley–Hamilton theorem—that every square matrix is a root of its own characteristic polynomial, and verified it for matrices of order 2 and 3. He was the first to define the concept of a group in the modern way—as a set with a binary operation satisfying certain laws. Formerly, when mathematicians spoke of "groups", they had meant permutation groups. Cayley tables and Cayley graphs as well as Cayley's theorem are named in honour of Cayley. Early years Arthur Cayley was born in Richmond, London, England, on 16 August 1821. His fathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cayley–Hamilton Theorem
In linear algebra, the Cayley–Hamilton theorem (named after the mathematicians Arthur Cayley and William Rowan Hamilton) states that every square matrix over a commutative ring (such as the real or complex numbers or the integers) satisfies its own characteristic equation. If is a given matrix and is the identity matrix, then the characteristic polynomial of is defined as p_A(\lambda)=\det(\lambda I_n-A), where is the determinant operation and is a variable for a scalar element of the base ring. Since the entries of the matrix (\lambda I_n-A) are (linear or constant) polynomials in , the determinant is also a degree- monic polynomial in , p_A(\lambda) = \lambda^n + c_\lambda^ + \cdots + c_1\lambda + c_0~. One can create an analogous polynomial p_A(A) in the matrix instead of the scalar variable , defined as p_A(A) = A^n + c_A^ + \cdots + c_1A + c_0I_n~. The Cayley–Hamilton theorem states that this polynomial expression is equal to the zero matrix, which is to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (26 October 1849 – 3 August 1917) was a German mathematician, best known for his contributions to the theory of elliptic functions, differential equations, number theory, and to group theory. He is known for the famous determinantal identities, known as Frobenius–Stickelberger formulae, governing elliptic functions, and for developing the theory of biquadratic forms. He was also the first to introduce the notion of rational approximations of functions (nowadays known as Padé approximants), and gave the first full proof for the Cayley–Hamilton theorem. He also lent his name to certain differential-geometric objects in modern mathematical physics, known as Frobenius manifolds. Biography Ferdinand Georg Frobenius was born on 26 October 1849 in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin from parents Christian Ferdinand Frobenius, a Protestant parson, and Christine Elizabeth Friedrich. He entered the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in 1860 when he was nearly el ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augustin Louis Cauchy
Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (, ; ; 21 August 178923 May 1857) was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He was one of the first to state and rigorously prove theorems of calculus, rejecting the heuristic principle of the generality of algebra of earlier authors. He almost singlehandedly founded complex analysis and the study of permutation groups in abstract algebra. A profound mathematician, Cauchy had a great influence over his contemporaries and successors; Hans Freudenthal stated: "More concepts and theorems have been named for Cauchy than for any other mathematician (in elasticity alone there are sixteen concepts and theorems named for Cauchy)." Cauchy was a prolific writer; he wrote approximately eight hundred research articles and five complete textbooks on a variety of topics in the fields of mathematics and mathematical physics. Biog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burnside's Lemma
Burnside's lemma, sometimes also called Burnside's counting theorem, the Cauchy–Frobenius lemma, the orbit-counting theorem, or the Lemma that is not Burnside's, is a result in group theory that is often useful in taking account of symmetry when counting mathematical objects. Its various eponyms are based on William Burnside, George Pólya, Augustin Louis Cauchy, and Ferdinand Georg Frobenius. The result is not due to Burnside himself, who merely quotes it in his book 'On the Theory of Groups of Finite Order', attributing it instead to . Burnside's Lemma counts "orbits", which is the same thing as counting distinct objects taking account of a symmetry. Other ways of saying it are counting distinct objects up to an equivalence relation ''R'', or counting objects that are in canonical form. In the following, let ''G'' be a finite group that acts on a set ''X''. For each ''g'' in ''G'', let ''Xg'' denote the set of elements in ''X'' that are fixed by ''g'' (also said to be lef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges-Henri Halphen
Georges-Henri Halphen (; 30 October 1844, Rouen – 23 May 1889, Versailles) was a French mathematician. He was known for his work in geometry, particularly in enumerative geometry and the singularity theory of algebraic curves, in algebraic geometry. He also worked on invariant theory and projective differential geometry. Biography He did his studies at École Polytechnique (X 1862), where he graduated in 1866. He continued his education at École d'Application de l'Artillerie et du Génie de Metz. As a lieutenant of Artillery he was sent Auxonne first and then to Strasbourg. In 1872, Halphen settled in Paris, where he became a lecturer at the École Polytechnique and began his scientific studies. He completed his dissertation in 1878. In 1872 he married Rose Marguerite Aron, with whom he had eight children, four sons and four daughters. Of the four sons, three joined the military and two of them died in World War I. Louis Halphen (1880-1950) was a French historian specialized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Étienne Bézout
Étienne Bézout (; 31 March 1730 – 27 September 1783) was a French mathematician who was born in Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, France, and died in Avon (near Fontainebleau), France. Work In 1758 Bézout was elected an adjoint in mechanics of the French Academy of Sciences. Besides numerous minor works, he wrote a ''Théorie générale des équations algébriques'', published at Paris in 1779, which in particular contained much new and valuable matter on the theory of elimination and symmetrical functions of the roots of an equation: he used determinants in a paper in the ''Histoire de l'académie royale'', 1764, but did not treat the general theory. Publications * Legacy After his death, a statue was erected in his birth town, Nemours, to commemorate his achievements. In 2000, the minor planet 17285 Bezout was named after him. See also * Little Bézout's theorem * Bézout's theorem * Bézout's identity * Bézout matrix * Bézout domain References *''The original ver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy and music theory. Euler is held to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history and the greatest of the 18th century. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." Carl Friedrich Gauss remarked: "The study of Euler's works will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics, and nothing else can replace it." Euler i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colin MacLaurin
Colin Maclaurin (; gd, Cailean MacLabhruinn; February 1698 – 14 June 1746) was a Scottish mathematician who made important contributions to geometry and algebra. He is also known for being a child prodigy and holding the record for being the youngest professor. The Maclaurin series, a special case of the Taylor series, is named after him. Owing to changes in orthography since that time (his name was originally rendered as M'Laurine), his surname is alternatively written MacLaurin. Early life Maclaurin was born in Kilmodan, Argyll. His father, John Maclaurin, minister of Glendaruel, died when Maclaurin was in infancy, and his mother died before he reached nine years of age. He was then educated under the care of his uncle, Daniel Maclaurin, minister of Kilfinan. A child prodigy, he entered university at age 11. Academic career At eleven, Maclaurin, a child prodigy at the time, entered the University of Glasgow. He graduated Master of Arts three years later by defendin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus. In the , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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